How Seriously Has Joe Biden Hurt His Presidential Effort?

September 20, 1987|By Stephen Chapman.

The Democratic presidential candidates, who have been uncharitably likened to the seven dwarfs, are apparently determined to embody the seven deadly sins instead. Gary Hart embraced lust. Now Joe Biden has taken on covetousness, and maybe sloth as well. Several of the contenders could probably qualify for pride or envy, qualities almost mandatory for ambitious politicians. Anyone for gluttony?

There was a time when American political leaders produced prose of lasting value. Ulysses S. Grant`s memoirs, for example, are considered one of the premier works of American literature. Abraham Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg address himself, in the custom of the day. Later, speeches got turned over to faceless ghostwriters, and books too.

When a real politician insists on composing his own words, as Jimmy Carter reportedly does in his universally unread volumes, the results usually discredit the practice. Today it`s rare to find a public official who not only writes, but writes something worth reading. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the Democratic senator from New York, is one of the few who come to mind. One magazine I know generally declines to publish articles by politicians, on the theory that the purported authors are not the real authors.

Americans are grown-up about this development. They don`t wait in anticipation for their elected representatives to produce original works of political theory. They don`t demand that politicians personally draft the 20 or 30 speeches they have to give every week-or even to read them before they deliver them. The average voter knows that most utterances, down to press conference answers, are the work of committees of aides, who labor vigilantly to make sure the politician doesn`t slip into spontaneity and say the wrong thing.

But Sen. Biden apparently has pushed the trend to new lengths. Borrowing a vivid phrase or two without attribution is common in politics, but lifting whole pages of oratory from someone else is not. A politician who can afford speechwriters ought to be able to afford speechwriters who can compose a 15-minute talk without excessive resort to scissors and paste.

All this might amount to much ado about nothing-as Biden put it in his Thursday press conference, mysteriously neglecting to credit William Shakespeare for the phrase-if it weren`t for the discovery that he was penalized in law school for a similar offense, namely plagiarizing a law review article. It looks less like an odd lapse, which is excusable, than an ingrained habit, which may not be.

Biden didn`t help himself with his labored explanation for the law school offense. ``I was wrong, but I was not malevolent,`` he declared repeatedly, as if it matters. Webster`s defines ``malevolent`` as ``wishing evil or harm to others.`` Plagiarism rarely stems from a desire to harm others; it stems from a desire to help oneself with a minimum of effort. Biden sounds like a thief pleading for mercy on the grounds that he isn`t a rapist.

One serious offense 23 years ago and several modest ones recently don`t reveal Biden as a really disreputable man, unfit for public office. Still, they most likely will do fatal damage to his presidential campaign. The reasons are several.

One is the higher ethical standards imposed by voters. Petty graft, outside of a few places like Chicago, is no longer overlooked. Laws regarding outside income and campaign contributions are stricter than ever before.

Another is that personal integrity is one of the few matters that lend themselves to firsthand judgments by the voters. Most voters may feel unable to judge whether a politician is right about the defense appropriations bill. But they are able to consider evidence about a politician`s ethics and reach a verdict, since they make similar evaluations about people every day.

The last is that the growing scope and complexity of government action make matters like this more important. Voters tend to vote for general themes, trusting candidates to apply them in specific cases. A politician who creates doubt about his personal honesty doesn`t merely sow fear that he will steal from the petty cash. He creates doubt that his concrete policies will match his applause lines.

In the case of Biden, the damage is likely to be especially great because of his previous reputation as an orator and because of the old suspicion that he`s a phony-a suspicion created by his insincere smile, his self-conscious emulation of the Kennedy brothers and his flip-flopping on the Bork nomination. Biden probably won`t go down in flames the way Gary Hart did. But eventually he`ll go down.